Study Guide: A Separate Peace (A BookCaps Study Guide)

By BookCaps

The perfect companion to John Knowles' "A Separate Peace," this study guide contains a chapter by chapter analysis of the book, a summary of the plot, and a guide to major characters and themes.

BookCap Study Guides do not contain text from the actual book, and are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Dec 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465755629

BookCaps

We all need refreshers every now and then. Whether you are a student trying to cram for that big final, or someone just trying to understand a book more, BookCaps can help. We are a small, but growing company, and are adding titles every month.Visit www.bookcaps.com to see more of our books, or contact us with any questions.

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John Knowles’

A Separate Peace

Golgotha Press

By BookCaps Study Guides

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc.

Published at SmashWords

www.bookcaps.com

Historical Context

John Knowles was born in West Virginia in 1926. In 1941, at the age of fifteen, Knowles left home to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire, from which he graduated in 1945.

Upon graduation, he spent less than one year in the Air Force and subsequently attended Yale University, from which he graduated in 1949. Upon graduation from Yale, Knowles was employed as a freelance writer as well as a journalist.

It was Knowles’ friend and fellow Yale alumnus Thornton Wilder who convinced him to continue his pursuits as a writer, and he was successful in publishing numerous short stories before having his first novel, A Separate Peace, published in 1959. Though Knowles had eight other novels published, none of them had the success of his first. A Separate Peace has been critically acclaimed and continues to be very successful to this day.

As the adage goes, write what you know, and that is exactly what Knowles did. A Separate Peace is set in a boarding school, much like the one Knowles attended in his adolescence.

The character of Gene Forrester is a lot like Knowles in that he is a transplant from the South, attending a boarding school in the New England area during the Second World War. Many of the activities and characters in the novel are based on experiences that Knowles himself witnessed and was party to at Exeter. Knowles has made it clear that the more vicious and darker themes of the novel are purely fictional, as he greatly enjoyed his time at Exeter and did not have the same negative experiences as his characters.

Plot

Gene Forrester is a sixteen year old boy attending summer classes at Devon School, a private boarding school in New Hampshire. Gene is good friends with Phineas (Finny), his roommate, and another boy named Elwin Lepellier (Leper). It becomes obvious that all is not sunshine and roses between Gene and Finny as Gene is jealous of Finny’s charm and knack for getting away with everything, as well as his superior athletic skills.

An accident happens one day when the boys are going to jump out of a tree, and Finny falls and shatters his leg, which is the end of his athletic career. Gene feels bad; worrying it is his fault that Finny fell because he made the branch shake, though Finny believes it